


Not Really Blood Red

by bravinto



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Astronomy, Friendship, Gen, Lunar Eclipse, Super Blood Moon 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 08:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5040943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravinto/pseuds/bravinto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Karen, this feels very shady, just so you know. First, you say, hey Foggy, there’s something I need to talk to you about. Then you say, hey Foggy, do you like astronomy? I’m tensing up, Karen.”</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>or how the staff of Nelson & Murdock spent the night of September 27, 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Really Blood Red

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be posted in time for the lunar eclipse, but something happened to my time management, so it's a bit late.
> 
> I'm endlessly thankful to [smallscreensidekick](http://archiveofourown.org/users/smallscreensidekick/pseuds/smallscreensidekick) for betareading!

That pleasantly cool September morning, Foggy came to the office a little later - he got distracted on his way to work by the smell of fresh bagels from a small coffee shop on the corner. And if he’s getting coffee and bagels for himself, he’s getting coffee and bagels for everyone. And if he’s getting an armful of snacks, he might as well chat with the barista while she’s preparing his order because he’d been here many times and they are acquainted. All in all, it made for about twenty minutes of being late (but he was bearing gifts so it’s not like anyone would complain).

This meant that when he arrived, Karen was already fumbling around with office equipment that habitually refused to cooperate, and Matt waved a hand at him through the glass, all tangled in earbud cords and waist deep in work already.

“Coffee?” Karen asked, grinning, the jerk.

“How about you stay away from the kitchenette, and I give you this?” Foggy said, coming up to her table and unloading some of the coffee-bagel cargo there.

“Wow, Foggy, thank you! Aww, you got my favorite, that’s very sweet,” she said, inspecting her paper bag. “Hey, there’s something I want to ask you?..”

“I’d be a bad boss if I didn’t know your fave bagel! Sure, just wait a minute, I need to feed my partner over there.”

He walked over to Matt’s office.

“Hello, Foggy,” Matt greeted him. “Have you got my favorite bagel, too?”

As if he didn’t know that, Foggy snorted. He looked his friend over, attentively. No bruises on his face, he sat relaxed, playful, without any sign of brooding or hidden pain (Foggy made sure to learn the pain tells, like he learned all Matt tells through the years).

“Good morning and yes, I have,” Foggy said. “You look good.”

“Why thank you! So do you.”

“How would you know?”

Matt just smirked, that dirty, shameless smirk he did when he knew he could troll you and get away with it.

“Whatever, don’t answer that,” Foggy grumbled and put his gifts on Matt’s desk. “If you are going to be nasty, I’ll eat your favorite bagel myself.”

“No please, not the bagel! I promise, I will be good, Senor Foggy!”

“That’s better,” Foggy said, and they both laughed.

 

“Do you like astronomy?”

“Karen, this feels very shady, just so you know. First, you say, hey Foggy, there’s something I need to talk to you about. Then you say, hey Foggy, do you like astronomy? I’m tensing up, Karen.”

She laughed, and he mentally high-fived himself. What did it say about him that he collected people around himself who needed as many laughs and smiles in their lives as they could get?..

“No, it’s just,” she said and looked down, a little shy, and he loved it, loved it, loved it. “I have a bit of a hobby.”

“This is amazing,” he said. “I love stars. But I don’t know shit. Well, I know it’s hydrogen and helium, and I watched Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, but’s that’s it, I’m afraid. Are you trying to ask me out to go stargazing?”

“Sort of. Look,” she gestured him to look at her laptop, “there’s this site I sometimes visit when… well, when work is slow. There’s lots of interesting things there, the weather, time zone calculators, timers and calendars, it’s very useful. And they have information about sun and moon eclipses. I remember I looked it up a long time ago, before… all that went down.”

Her shoulder twitched, like she was trying to suppress a shiver, and Foggy put a hand on her back as he leaned over to look at the screen.

“And now I remembered there was supposed to be a lunar eclipse and looked it up, and it turned out it’s next Sunday. I was wondering if you know any place to watch it from? Like a good rooftop?”

Foggy couldn’t help a snicker. People who need hugs and smiles and have a thing for rooftops.

“What?” she said, suspicious. “Do you know one?”

“Nah,” Foggy waved hands at her. “I don’t. But I have sources, if you know what I mean.”

“Thank you,” she said, genuinely glad and shiny. “I’d love if you came with me, it’s even at a reasonable hour.”

“You know me, I’m ready to party whenever.”

“Foggy…” she glanced at the glass wall and lowered her voice, unaware that it wasn’t going to help. “Do you think Matt would want to go, too? Is it okay to?..”

Is it okay to ask a blind person to go stargazing, as opposed to leaving them behind? This sort of thing occupied Foggy’s mind a lot in law school. Not that he was any sort of expert or anything, but from his experience with Matt (and like, his general life advice), it’s always better to ask than assume.

“I don’t know if he would want to, but I think it’s alright to ask.”

If Murdock ends up going with them (because Foggy would never refuse to hang out with Karen on the roof), they would find a way to make it fun for him. Foggy kind of excelled at it at this point.

 

When Karen volunteered to go get lunch for the three of them, since Foggy had brought coffee and bagels, he went to Matt’s office to assess the situation.

“You heard that, yeah?”

“Heard what?”

“The moon talk.”

Matt gave him the blank expression.

“The moon talk! About the eclipse and the rooftop.”

“I think maybe bits of it?..”

“Murdock. Don’t tell me you can’t hear through this almost non-existent wall.”

Matt laughed.

“Of course I can. I mean I heard it, I just filtered it out. I was working, you know?”

“Filtered out? Me? How dare you.”

“Oh, it’s a bit like when there’s a tv in the next room. Easy to block out when you are actually trying to _work_.”

Foggy punched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Alright, point taken. Now, I may or may not be feeling a bit like an asshole, but I need you to show me a nice accessible rooftop for astronomical observations.”

“Ummm, I could think of two or three off the top of my head, and there should be more if you give me a minute,“ Matt said. “But why are you feeling like an asshole?”

“Because Karen wants to invite you as well, and you won’t be able to see it, but I think you should accept, if you can.”

Matt raised his eyebrows and Foggy sighed.

“When she started talking about the eclipse and astronomy, her eyes lit up like I’ve never seen before. Like, it’s the first time I see that her so into something, not because she has to but because she wants to. And I think it is something we should most definitely support.”

“And she wants to invite me too?..”

There it went again, the open, vulnerable, i-can-not-believe-people-genuinely-want-me-around-to-share-good-things tone that made Foggy want to wail and shit in the shoes of the people responsible for that, and also maybe hold Matt close and never let go.

“Of course, you dummy. Where were you? I thought your creep’s ears would be all over it. I promise, it’ll be fun. How about we have a picnic up there? The time is reasonable, from about eight till around midnight, on Sunday. We could have a picnic with mulled wine or something like that, and hot food. Hmmm. I don’t suppose starting a fire up there is a good idea?”

“Most definitely not.”

“Then we need a quick route to food. You have roof access but it faces that damned billboard. Huh,” Foggy said, struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration. “How about the roof of my building? We’ll be able to grab snacks any time we want to.”

“Too slanted,” Matt immediately shot down. “You can’t sit there comfortably for a long time, your legs get tired and numb too quickly.”

“What do you know about my rooftop?” Foggy said, offended on his rooftop’s part.

All of a sudden, Matt got very interested in moving objects around on his desk, and Foggy experienced a wide range of mixed feelings about having your vigilante best friend sitting on top of your house for hours, most probably spying on you like a creep. This was not what he wanted to deal with right now.

“O-okay,” he said and flailed a little. “We will talk about this some other time. I’ve emphasized my discomfort with expressive arm movements. Okay, so my roof won’t do. What else?”

“Karen’s won’t either,” Matt said quickly, apparently relieved to be off the hook for now. “There’s no easy access from there, it’s all locked.”

“Huh,” Foggy said again. “Well, what do you think would be the best option?”

“My roof isn’t good, but the one next to it is okay, and it faces the other way. I hope it will do. I don’t think there’s anything blocking the horizon too badly nearby, you could come over and check?”

“Deal!”

 

It was just a bit before eight when they finished cooking, climbed up the stairs in Matt’s apartment and cautiously stepped out into the night.

“So, Karen,“ Foggy said as they were settling on the roof next to Matt’s, foam to sit on and thermoses of spiked tea. “Is _this_ a date?”

She laughed:they’d made it into a meme by now.

“I don’t know, are you and Matt on a date? It’s you two who are holding hands.”

“Inconclusive, we’re always holding hands. Matt, are we on a date?”

“Maybe we are all on a date,” Matt offered benevolently.

“On a date with science! Damn, it’s overcast,“ Karen looked up, disappointed.

(“I think it will rain tonight,” Matt had whispered in Foggy’s ear back in the kitchen.)

“Maybe it will clear later,” Foggy patted her arm comfortingly. “When does the major fun begin?”

Karen looked down at her phone.

“Eleven minutes after ten. Hey, did you know that Matt’s wifi reaches here?”

“This, my friends,” Foggy said, whipping out his own phone, “is a wonderful discovery. We may now have a proper date, with music and dinner!”

He put on a playlist, and they helped themselves to tea and steaming potato and sausage mix - not the most sophisticated meal, but hey! it was hot and fresh and frankly, quite delicious out there, in the fresh air.

“How did you get to be interested in astronomy, Karen?” Matt asked around a mouthful of potatoes.

“Where I used to live, there was a field. I would go there at night, sometimes. It was far away from the lights and the stars were bright, you could even see the Milky Way. I spent a lot of time there, it was quiet and calm, and eventually I started looking up stars and constellations. It just felt like they’d become my friends after a while.”

It sounded sincere and intimate. Not for the first time Foggy wondered, what life was like for Karen before New York. She never really talked about her past, and he thought it couldn’t have been good. He pictured a teenage blond girl gazing up at the stars, alone out there at night, running away from - who knows what? Judging by Matt’s pensive expression, he must’ve been thinking along the same lines.

“Weren’t you afraid to go out at night?” Matt asked.

“No, never,” she said. “It was a rural area, not like here. There was never anyone outside. Just me and the stars.”

“This is beautiful, Karen,” Foggy said. “Though, don’t expect us city boys to understand. That one time we went on a picnic, I was bitten by a squirrel and Matt got scared half to death by a bumblebee.”

Everybody laughed. In hindsight, Foggy thought, the bumblebee incident made much more sense in the light of Matt’s superpowers.

The sky began to clear about an hour later, and he volunteered to go grab more food and refill their tea vessels. Foggy heated potatoes and sausage on Matt’s stove, poured the generously spiked tea into thermoses and walked back up.

“...only knew the Dipper, I think?” he heard Matt say as he returned to their picnic spot and treated everyone to the second helping.

“Which one?” Karen asked. “The big one or the small one?”

“I… honestly have no idea,” Matt smiled.

“It was probably the Big Dipper,” Karen decided, “it’s the only constellation you can properly see in here.”

“I’m not missing out then.”

“I can only tell the Big Dipper, too,” Foggy chimed in.

“I could teach you guys, if you want,” she offered.

“Even me?” Matt said, a little wistful.

“Is that a challenge?” Karen said, eyes sparkling, and Matt grinned in the not-made-of-glass way, and Foggy felt very good and warm inside, because it seemed they both were getting what they wanted and having fun. Also, the rum in the tea might have contributed.

“We are all ears, Ms Page,” he said and settled cross-legged on the foam.

“Okay. Matt, turn you back, please?”

Matt frowned, confused, but obliged. Karen moved closer to him and turned to Foggy.

“There are constellations that are visible all year in the Northern hemisphere,” she said. “Like Cassiopeia. It’s easy to find because it looks like a W”.

She slowly traced a large lopsided W on Matt’s back, and Foggy only saw a bit of his profile, but his smile grew so big it seemed to be lighting up even the back of his head.

 

They lost count of time a little bit, with Karen drawing the shapes of constellations on Matt’s back and telling her eager listeners about the stars, when something shone through the broken clouds.

“Hey look, the Moon!” Karen called.

“It’s already partly covered,” Foggy narrated for Matt. “Like a big shadow slowly eating chunks off the moon. Oh shit, I think I can see the eaten part turning red!”

He watched, in awe, as the blackened part started to get a deep copper color, manifesting from out of the dark.

“Why is it turning red, Karen?” Matt asked.

“Because of the sunlight coming from around the Earth, through the atmosphere. It’s the same color the light has at dawn, because that’s what you’d see if you were watching this from the Moon. They say you can also see a bluish color from the ozone layer, but we’d need binoculars and better conditions.”

“This is fascinating,” Foggy said.

He sipped tea, watching the bright piece of the Moon slowly disappear, and described it in as many details as he could for Murdock.

“There must be many people watching it tonight from rooftops and windows,” Matt said, code for _I know there are many people watching it tonight from rooftops and windows_.

“Good,” Foggy replied, because he also loved being a troll sometimes. “I hope it distracts the locals from breaking the law tonight.”

Matt laughed, and Karen cheered at the Moon that got completely covered and started a friendly astronomy chat with some strangers on a neighboring balcony, and Foggy gulped down the rest of his tea, and this is how he wanted to remember that night - up high, in the good damp air of camaraderie and New York, giddy and tipsy, looking forward to a sleepover when the rain finally drives them away from the roof. Together.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> several notes that didn't make it into the fic itself:  
> 1) Foggy initially watched _Through The Wormhole_ for Gay Reasons, but soon got genuinely interested.  
>  2) Matt was slightly disappointed to learn that the moon wasn't actually the color of blood.  
> 3) Beware of squirrels. They are dangerous.


End file.
